“Just the same…” he muttered again, his forehead puckered and his eyes unusually thoughtful as they traced over every detail of her face, “I don’t like this feeling you could slip away from me. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Sevana. I ought to marry you right now—you know that, don’t you?”
She looked up at him lightly, wondering if he was serious—immensely touched he would even consider such a terrifying prospect for her. “This very minute?” she countered playfully. “I’d have to think about that one.”
“Meanwhile, think about this—” and he kissed her again, long and ardently.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Willy,” she said, stepping back a bit out of breath. “Thanks for crossing all those creeks to come get me, and giving me those delectable flowers for Joel’s dad.”
That was a slip she hadn’t intended. She bit her lip, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
“Joel’s dad?” Willy repeated. “Oh, cripes,” he groaned, “not the ‘friends only’ friend. Wait a minute, let me guess. He’s back, he’s broken off his engagement, and you two are—” He was ticking off the predictions on his fingers.
“Hush, Willy,” she broke in. “Your imagination is running away with you.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” he demanded. “Doggone it, Sevana, you owe me the truth.”
Sevana stifled a sigh. “It’s true he’s back, and he is breaking off his engagement. But why, I don’t know, and we are still nothing but friends.”
“Confound it all,” Willy said viciously, fully unconvinced by her speech. “I finally get you back, and you’re not even here, you’re somewhere else. I thought you’d finally let him go. Sevana, I swear to God, if you don’t show up tomorrow, I’m hiring my incredibly beautiful next-door neighbor to take your place.”
“The flowershop girl?” prompted Sevana. “You never mentioned she was beautiful. I thought you just felt sorry for her.”
“She even looks a little like you,” Willy said, steely.
“What if she can’t count?” Sevana demanded, scandalized. “What if she knows nothing about art?”
“I’ll train her!” cried Willy.
After he’d left in a state of high emotion, Sevana—with no mind whatsoever for the task—fell to packing.
Very late, sitting in the empty living room too tired even to go to bed, she fell into a reverie. So many other nights had she sat in that same room alone with her lostness and insecurity—but she was a stranger to the person she’d been there. One thing she knew now, without any doubt, was that she was meant for the mountains. It was more than a quixotic notion or a passing captivation—more even than a forbidden desire she wasn’t allowed to indulge. She belonged there, had always belonged there; she could never live anywhere else. In some unforeseen way, in the unsuspecting act of going to visit her brother for a summer, she had somehow found her life. The mountains hadn’t been calling her away to seek some elusive dream—her dreams had been right in front of her. She just hadn’t known it then, to be able to answer. And the only question now was how to get back—after she had locked herself into a different, alien path. Did she have the courage to tell Willy she was backing out of his world, after she had committed herself to it—and him? She had chosen it all freely, she had told him she loved him; she had a promise to keep. She didn’t want to be a person who couldn’t be taken at her word.
But in the morning, after a short and unrestful night, she dismissed any inclinations she might have had to bail on Calgary. Closing a handbag, she told herself that regardless of anything else that was true, at this point she had an obligation to honor. Everything was in place, it was too late to change her course. Willy was counting on her, she could not let him down.
A last time she looked around the apartment, restored to a neat stack of boxes ready for transport. She felt more orderly about her life, too, felt good about keeping her commitments. It was the right thing to do. Everything had been off last night; she had been fatigued and emotional. You didn’t set your life in order by running from your responsibilities. You didn’t find your own happiness by seizing it over everyone else’s. She would have to wait for another time, a different way, to follow the dreams she now knew to be hers.
In a touching show of solidarity Ralf, Jillian, and Len all came to see her off. They’d wanted to hear how her brother was doing, and have the chance to say goodbye in person. After carrying her baggage into the bus station, Ralf pumped her hand. “We’ll miss you way more than Willy,” he assured her heartily.
“I’ll never forget how you took me to see Fenn at Christmas, Ralf,” said Sevana, smiling up at him gratefully.
“Who knows, Sevana, maybe we’ll move to Calgary before it’s over,” Jillian speculated, hugging her. Sevana appreciated how unquestioningly Jillian had accepted her choice for Willy and Calgary, even though it had gone against her better advice.
“Thanks for everything,” Sevana whispered in her ear, and they both laughed as their thoughts ran in conjunction to the unsolicited addition to Len’s art collection.
Len didn’t say much but hugged her, too, and Sevana thought how quietly he had liked her and never betrayed how he felt. “I won’t forget you, Len,” she said softly. “Best of luck with Annalisa.”
After her friends left, Sevana bought her ticket, then found a telephone to dial Willy and tell him she was on her way. When it started ringing, she hung up as if she’d been stung. Berating herself for the foolishness, she went through the whole process again. She made herself let it ring until Willy answered. Then she opened her mouth, but couldn’t say the words.
“Hello?” Willy said again, more loudly.
She hung up and stared down at the tiles of the floor in mortification. She didn’t know what was wrong with her.
The bus for Calgary came in with a whine of gears and wheeze of brakes, and the loudspeaker announced it was time to board. Sevana stood looking at the open bus door that would take her to her new life in the center of the art world, and she couldn’t walk through it. She was still looking at it ten minutes later when the bus closed its door and pulled away in a blast of exhaust.
Tears burned her eyes. She was angry with herself. She was being irrational, but she seemed unable to pull herself out of it. She sat down on an available seat in the grip of extreme bewilderment, unable to think or plan or take action.
The man who had sold her the ticket had been watching her ever since she’d let the bus go by. He hadn’t even felt the need to tell her it was her bus, he could see the recognition of it so plainly on her expressive face. That she was in some kind of emotional turmoil was unmistakable. The unusual clarity of her beauty had attracted his notice from the first, and he’d kept his eye on her amid the bustle of the station. Now he walked over to her. He was tall and lean like the army men she knew, a little gray tingeing his short black hair. “Is there something I can help you with, miss?”
She looked up at the blue uniform through a mist, trying to focus on his kindly face.
“Where is it you want to go?” he tried again.
That, at least, was a question she could answer. “Cragmont,” she blurted out, the word escaping her involuntarily. And like magic, through her tears she was laughing, and her chest felt light.
One hour later she was boarding a bus bound for the west coast. She was to switch buses at Creston and get off at Nelson. The ticket man had arranged everything. She felt he must be an angel appeared to help her. She waved at him as she went up the bus steps, and he waved back with a smile for the uncommonly pretty girl with eyes like a starry summer night.
The bus trip took the rest of the day, but for Sevana it flew by, as miles do when one is traveling the same direction as one’s heart. She already knew what she would do. Her mind, which had been having so much trouble making decisions over the past few months, had no difficulty now. She would find a job, any job, and set up residence in Cragmont. She would paint mountain scenery to her full content. It was too much, this trying
to go against the pull of her heart—she was compelled to answer it. She would call Willy, of course. But as she considered how to explain her inexcusable actions to him, she realized he already knew. He had said his goodbyes last night when he’d kissed her and spoken his regrets.
There was an overnight delay at Nelson. In the morning she was the sole passenger of the Selkirk Stage with the same solemn-eyed, taciturn driver of last spring, who gravely informed her that he remembered her from last year, and then said nothing else the whole trip. She had called Willy from the motel. He had blown up and yelled when she told him where she was, but had recovered quickly enough, saying he guessed it was his neighbor’s lucky day: she’d cooked him a sensational dinner last night and had been insanely jealous to learn he already had a girlfriend. Sevana wished him fame and fortune, asked his pardon many times sincerely, and promised to visit the shop soon—all the while knowing she should feel some fear at heedlessly discarding all her prospects there when she had no certain ones anywhere else, but instead feeling only an exhilarating sense of freedom.
She asked the driver to drop her off at Lakeshore Lodge, and there she paid for a room. She stood at her lakeview window in utmost contentment of the massive crestline under which she had come to harbor. She needed to start searching for work and a place to rent.
By evening she was no closer to a job, but had already found a house. Only the second one she’d looked at, she liked immediately. It was one of the highest on the hill before the forest began, very small and quaint, overlooking the town and lake. She told the landlord she would take it, put money down on the spot. She returned to the Lodge for a hamburger, then went out on the beach to plot her next course of action.
All through dinner Joel watched her from the table made from a round of a huge pine—not believing the figure he saw on the lakeshore, yet knowing it was she. He didn’t say anything to his father who ate beside him, but he kept track of that graceful, girlish silhouette down the beach. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere. She just wandered the shore, paused at the water’s edge with her face lifted to the mountains, tried to skip a rock which sank. “Keep your wrist level,” Joel muttered—and when his father asked what he said, he shrugged helplessly. “Talking to myself.”
She sat in the sand and drew something with a twig, then got up and strolled a few paces, stopping again to look across to the mountains as if she couldn’t get enough of the sight, her straight hair blowing in the wind coming off the water.
When Joel rose from dinner, he marked once more the location where she stood, before he wheeled his father to his room and got him situated. Then he excused himself, trying not to seem impatient, saying he had an errand to attend to. He hurried to the lakeshore, feeling himself trembling with expectation. She was not in sight.
His eyes searched both directions as far as he could see. Then he walked briskly a great length of shore. He was ready to blame his distraught mind for making the whole thing up, when he found a very good likeness of the lake and mountains scratched in the sand. Blast it all, he should have run out when he’d first seen her, instead of being polite and not deserting his father. But she’d acted like she was going nowhere, not a plan in the world for the evening.
What she was doing here, he could not even think. He turned back to the lodge to inquire if anyone had seen her.
CHAPTER 55
Joel stayed in his father’s room that night, but he didn’t sleep well. The white-haired matron of the lodge had told him that yes, a Miss Selwyn had a room there, but no, she didn’t know where she was. She didn’t make it a habit to pry into her guests’ affairs, and hoped he wouldn’t either.
His knock at Sevana’s door went unanswered into the late hours of the night, when he finally gave up.
In the morning he made a pretense of breakfast with his father, although he possessed no appetite, and saw him comfortable for the day. Then he said he needed to start looking for a place to live, which was misleading because it was not what he was intending to do just then. Stopping by the house of the woman he had hired to look after his father for the summer, he told her he would be gone for a while, and headed straight up the river to Fenn’s.
The red truck wasn’t parked there and no one appeared to be home. He even searched up at his cabin and in the pasture. Why was he looking for her there?—she had probably returned to Calgary and he was an addled fool. Dejected, he started back for town.
Sevana was so happy she was practically singing as she climbed the rocky trail—and might have attempted it if she’d had any breath to spare. She had been handed a lucky break. While walking by the lake, she’d been spotted by Milt and Emery, who stopped to see if she wanted a ride out to the homestead. She took them up on the offer at once. She couldn’t wait to tell Fenn about her new house and let him know she wouldn’t be so far away.
Fenn had been impressed at her news. Said it was the smartest thing she’d ever done, getting out of the city. He was back on the job running the loader, but would drive her to Cragmont after the shift tomorrow and help her get settled in.
“There’s one thing I want to do before I get tied into a job, before I do anything else,” she said boldly, casting a desirous look at the reaches above her.
“Name it.”
“I want to go to the high country. I want to see Stormy Pass in the springtime. Oh Fenn, is there any way?”
“No—I’m sorry, but there isn’t. It’s too dangerous for you to go alone, and the crew needs my help. We have a sale with a deadline we might not meet, even with all of us working.”
“So I can’t take Trapper?”
“No, I won’t be responsible for your broken neck.”
“Then I’ll walk,” she said calmly.
“Walk! No, you won’t.”
“I’m sorry, Fenn… I don’t want to cause you any worry, but I’m going. I can walk ten miles in a day. I walked all over Lethbridge and out into the countryside. I’m going tomorrow morning and I’ll be gone overnight. I’ll build a fire and sit by it all night to keep the wildlife away. I’ll be scared stiff, but I’m going.”
Fenn shook his head at such obstinacy. “In that case you’re taking a gun, and you’re going to practice shooting it tonight.”
And now she was on the trail with the cumbersome revolver strapped to her side, and in six hours or so—if all went well—she would be in that alpestrine world that was like no other.
On the way back to Cragmont, Joel stopped at the loggers’ camp. Finding Cleaver Dan peeling apples in the mess hall, he asked if he knew where the crew was logging, and Cleaver Dan did. There had been too many gloomy speculations of them missing the shut-off date not to know exactly where they were.
Joel drove to the unit and spotted Fenn operating the loader on the landing just below the road. Fenn idled the engine when he saw Joel, but it was still so noisy it made communication a challenge. “Do you know where Sevana is?” Joel yelled.
“Hiking to Stormy Pass,” Fenn shouted back from the cab. “Left this morning. Couldn’t talk her out of it.”
“What?” bellowed Joel. “Alone?”
“You’ve got that right.”
“I’m going to find her.” Joel turned on his heel, suddenly in a hurry.
“Good idea,” Fenn called. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her.” He hollered after him: “Don’t take her by surprise. She has a gun.”
Joel lifted a hand to show he heard, and took off in his truck. She’d had a good head start. She could be halfway by now if Fenn had driven her to the trailhead. He parked at the pack-bridge and began up the trail at the fastest steady pace he could maintain. Already since the Yukon, with good food and rest, he could feel his endurance beginning to return.
When he thought he might be getting close, he started shouting her name before rounding a blind bend. He climbed this way for another half hour before he saw her. Hiking fast, jabbing a walking stick briskly into the dirt as if her life depended on getting to the top, she wore an
impromptu outfit of Fenn’s flannel shirt tied around her waist and his fishing cap jammed down on her head, her hair in a braid below it. “Sevana!” he shouted.
She whirled in amazement. “Joel!” Her face lit in greatest delight, then clouded with suspicion. “Fenn sent you after me, didn’t he?”
“No, he just told me where you were.”
“And said to talk me out of it?”
“As a matter of fact.” Joel grinned. “But I’m not going to.”
“No?”
“No, I’m going with you.”
She tipped back her head with a lilting laugh that made the cap fall off. She scooped it up and crushed it back in place with, “Then let’s go! I can’t wait to see the wildflowers again, and hear the wind singing on the ridgetops!” And she took off with renewed, into-the-ground vigor.
He followed at a pace a little slower than he’d been keeping. “Sevana,” he posed the question he’d been wondering all night, “why are you here instead of at your new job in Calgary?”
She whirled to face him. “I’m moving to Cragmont, Joel.” Her eyes glowed a deep violet shade in their happy intensity. “I rented a house. From now on this is my studio—” and she twirled around with her arms stretched in the air. Then she took off again so fast that even Joel had to scramble to catch up.
“I read you there,” he said, when he’d resumed his place behind her. There was so much more he wanted to ask, but it was difficult to hold a prolonged conversation with someone burning up a trail. “I’ve got news, too,” he mentioned after an appreciable distance, when the crags came into sight ahead and she paused to admire them. They were both winded from the climb. “I got hold of Randall by phone. Asked what the deal was, why he’s not living here. He said his detail is opening up into a permanent position. He’s taking a transfer over to Tweedsmuir country.”
“You’re joking.” Sevana reacted with complete surprise. “I never thought he’d leave. Why, he’s been here twenty-two years and practically runs the whole forest!”
Stony River Page 59